Bad Gays Extra Bad Gays

Enjoy a sneak preview of EXTRA BAD GAYS, our monthly, subscriber-only show on contemporary queer politics and culture. For the full episode and a new episode every month, click 'subscribe' on Apple Podcasts or join our Patreon by clicking here.

It's a good old-fashioned Tory sex scandal! We break down the trials and tribulations of one William Wragg MP, a man who simultaneously looks 13 and 60 despite actually being in his thirties. The right-wing and not-so-honorable gentleman succumbed to a honey trap and shared colleagues' phone numbers to avoid 'compromising' photographs being leaked. To Ben's dismay, Huw speculates in vivid detail as to what these pictures might depict. We discuss what the scandal reveals about the strange relationship between 'sleaze,' decaying Conservative rule, and the relationship between class and homosexuality in Britain. Then we break down the Gus Van Sant/Jon Robin Baitz Truman Capote series: and discuss alternatives to this ultimately disappointing series.

Today’s subject had a multi-hyphenate name and a multi-hyphenate resume––, in his 55 years of life, he was an adventurer, a geologist, a spy, a dinosaur scientist, one of the founders of paleobiology, the world’s first airplane hijacker, a founder of the field of Albanian studies, a cosplay artist, and a murderer. Born in 1877 in Transylvania, the Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felsö-Szilvás may have been, except perhaps as a pub quiz answer, lost to history since his death, but in his lifetime he had an outsized impact on several scientific disciplines, central European politics and nationalisms, and, unfortunately, the man who he lived with until a murder-suicide ended both of their lives.
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SOURCES:
Gëzim Alpion, “Baron Franz Nopcsa and His Ambition for the Albanian Throne,” BESA Journal 6, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 25–32
Gareth Dyke, “The Dinosaur Baron of Transylvania,” Scientific American, October 1, 2011, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dinosaur-baron-of-transylvania/
Robert Elsie, “1907 | Baron Franz Nopcsa: The Baron Held Hostage in the Mountains of Dibra,” Texts and Documents of Albanian History, accessed April 18, 2024, http://www.albanianhistory.net/1907_Nopcsa2/index.html
Robert Elsie, “The Viennese Scholar Who Almost Became King of Albania: Baron Franz Nopcsa and His Contribution to Albanian Studies,” n.d., http://www.elsie.de/pdf/articles/A1999VienneseNopcsa.pdf
Emily Osterloff, “Franz Nopcsa: The Dashing Baron Who Discovered Dwarf Dinosaurs,” Natural History Museum, accessed April 18, 2024, https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/franz-nopcsa-the-dashing-baron-who-discovered-dwarf-dinosaurs.html
Vanessa Veselka, “History Forgot This Rogue Aristocrat Who Discovered Dinosaurs and Died Penniless,” Smithsonian Magazine, accessed April 18, 2024, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-forgot-rogue-aristocrat-discovered-dinosaurs-died-penniless-180959504/
Traveler, Scholar, Political Adventurer: A Transylvanian Baron at the Birth of Albanian Independence: The Memoirs of Franz Nopcsa, NED-New edition, 1 (Central European University Press, 2014), https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7829/j.ctt6wpkrc;
"A Field Guide to the Long History of Skyjackings,” CrimeReads(blog), May 10, 2021, https://crimereads.com/skyjackings/.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, our outro music is by Dj Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

"If you have to take an beautiful enslaved convert boy from another province to become your lover, and then you fall hopelessly in love with him, and then promote him and he attains great power, do be aware than he might actually want to take your throne." Somehow, this extremely specific lesson was forgotten by two generations of rulers. Join us in a trip back to the court of 1300s Delhi for a story of love, lust, intrigue, revolution, and, in the words of a historian of the time, "the results of pampering young men and catamites."
Click here to subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.
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SOURCES:
Indira Chatterjee, "Alienation, Intimacy and Gender: Problems for a History of Love in South Asia," in Ruth Vanita ed., Queering India: Same-Sex Love And Eroticism In Indian Culture And Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002)
Abraham Eraly, Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (Delhi: Penguin India, 2014)
Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, eds., Same-Sex Love in India: Readings in Indian Literature (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016)
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Marthe Hanau built a several-hundred-million-franc financial powerhouse: which turned out to be a fraud. Her investors had been promised returns of 8% interest on savings and in investments forty percent a year —but by the time she died in prison, they were owed a hundred and fifty five million francs. Some people even credit her spectacular swindle to the political confluence that brought Leon Blum and his popular front to power in France at the end of the 1930s. This is the fascinating tale of just how far one woman was able to go to accumulate wealth and power by any means necessary.
Click here to subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.
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SOURCES:
Stéphanie Bee, "La Bancquiére des Annès Folles," Univers-L, January 11, 2020, https://www.univers-l.com/portrait_marthe_hanau.html
Janet Flanner, "The Swindling Presidente," The New Yorker, August 18, 1939, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/08/26/annals-of-crime
Paul Jankowski, Stavisky: A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).
Dean Jobb, "The Ponzi of Paris," CrimeReads, December 3, 2021, https://crimereads.com/marthe-hanau-paris-ponzi-confidence-woman/
Rod Kedward, La Vie en Bleu - France and the French since 1900 (London: Allen Lane, 2005).
Wilfried Knapp, France--partial Eclipse: from the Stavisky Riots to the Nazi Conquest (London: Macdonald, 1972).
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner
 

This month's conversation begins with a conversation about the horrific murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies in Australia, allegedly by Baird's ex-boyfriend Beau Lamarre-Condon. Lamarre-Condon, a police officer with the New South Wales police force, is alleged to have stalked Baird and then murdered the two with a police-issued firearm. We talk about the tone-deaf response of the New South Wales police force to the murders, their insistence on marching in Sydney's Mardi Gras, and Lamarre-Condon's Andrew Cunanan-like qualities. Then, we turn to recent reports of bad behavior on the set of Queer Eye and reflect on parasocial relationships and the trap of celebrity.